Restaurants, work canteens, sandwich bars and fast food outlets will all
display how many calories are in the meals on their menus in future, Andrew
Lansley, the Health Secretary, has said.

On average, people eat one meal a day outside of the family home, and there is concern that in most cases they are in the dark about the healthiness or otherwise of the food they consume.

As part of the Government’s new “responsibility deal,” ministers believe that rather than being told how to eat, individuals should be empowered to take their own decisions about becoming healthier.

In order to do that, they believe that more information needs to be made available, so that the public have the tools to look after themselves in the absence of the “nanny state”.

Giving evidence before the Commons health committee earlier this week, Mr Lansley said that he was concerned that there was currently an “obesogenic environment” in the nation’s food outlets which made it difficult for people to eat well.

Eating habits had not changed significantly despite the decline in manual labour over the last few decades which meant that most people were not burning off enough calories during the course of their working day.

He confirmed that the Government was investigating ways of working with the food industry to help arm people with the information they need to keep their weight down.

Mr Lansley said: “One of the things we are … looking at through the responsibility deal is the question, for example, of out of home calorie labelling.

“It’s all very well having calorie labelling on your supermarket shelf, but if a third of meals are being taken out of home, and there is no clear labelling on those, it is a major gap in people’s ability to understand literally the quantity of food they are eating, and try themselves to manage their diet.”

Following a consultation with representatives from the catering industry, including fast food restaurants, the Government will publish details of their plans for calorie displays in the spring.

In parts of the United States, including New York and Los Angeles, restaurants are already required by law to provide diners with the calorie content of their meals.

But sources suggested that, under European Union competition laws, the Government would be unable to legislate to demand that the information was displayed.

Instead, Mr Lansley hopes to gain the voluntary agreement of the food industry to set a date after which all restaurants would be expected to disclose the calorie content of the meals they serve.

Those who failed to abide by the agreement would be dealt with internally, under a system of self-regulation compared to the Press Complaints Commission.

But critics are likely to cast doubt on whether a voluntary system would work, after a similar scheme announced with great fanfare by the last Labour government collapsed within a year.

Last December, the Food Standards Agency set up a trial with a number of major fast food and restaurant firms, in which they agreed to display printed calorie counts next to products on shelves, on menus or beside tills.

However, most of the firms, including KFC, Burger King and Pizza Hut, have now quietly abandoned the project.

Of the 18 companies involved in the trial, only Pret A Manger continues to display calories next to all products.

In other outlets, Customers are obliged to seek out information to discover, for example, that a Starbucks carrot cake contains 560 calories, a Pizza Hut pizza has 2,656 calories and a Burger King milkshake 612 calories. The recommended daily intake for a man is 2,500 and a woman 2,000.

Mr Lansley was speaking ahead of the publication of the Public Health White Paper next week, which will put a new responsibility on local councils to invest in prevention in health care.

A Director of Public Health will advise new Health and Wellbeing Boards at local authorities how best to target resources.

Sources said that they would be required to pay particular attention to tackling health inequalities, such as the alarming rates of teenage pregnancies and maternal mortality, which are among the highest in western Europe.

A new body, modelled on the Centre for Disease Control in the United States, will help shape the Government’s response to future emergencies such as an outbreak of pandemic influenza.